The Gardens Between | An Appreciation for Short Games

There's something to be said about a game that doesn't waste the player's time. With it being the end of the year already, I've been taking time to reflect on the games I've played over 2018. From God of War to Assassin's Creed Odyssey to Red Dead Redemption 2, this year has been another knockout in terms of quality and quantity for your money. With that said, it was hard finding a game this year I had played that took me less than 20 hours to to complete. Most of the journeys that each game took me on lasted me days, if not weeks, at times.

This thought didn't really stick out as a negative in my mind though; what's wrong with games having strong value propositions? For the majority of video game players, they'll only purchase a handful of games per year, so if anything these games that provide near 100 hours of playtime should certainly be lauded. However it was this past week when I was 48 hours in to Assassin's Creed Odyssey and had only completed one of three main quest lines with at least 4-6 more hours of playtime to finish the other two that I decided to give up the game cold turkey. For a game I had spent so much time playing just absolutely in love, i eventually grew to dislike how much time I was spending just doing things I felt were menial and unnecessary. The loop grew tiresome, echoing my sentiments from another Ubisoft game released this year - Far Cry 5.

The same thing slowly began to creep up during my play-through of Red Dead Redemption 2 with its deliberately slow pace and drawn out animations. Luckily enough, the epilogue ended right before I was nearing my breaking point. Now, with one month left until the new year, I long for games to play that wouldn't require a lot out of me. Just a few nights to finish, and then I could shelve it and move on to something else. It was in this streak of yearning that I began to browse through Xbox's Game Pass catalog for something short. And that is when I stumbled upon a game called "The Gardens Between".

The cover artwork and the name sparked a curiosity within, and with such a low asking price I couldn’t help but install it. From the game's start menu to its cell-shaded aesthetic to the soft music that streamed continuously, I immediately grew warm. The game evoked a similar feeling to another game I've always held dear to me - Monument Valley.

Much like that game, The Gardens Between is a puzzle that revels around a central mechanic. For Monument Valley, it was its isometric perspective, and for this it's its focus on time. The game is simple in its control - you can move time forwards and backwards, and then you press a single button for contextual interactions. Its story is marred in a sort of mystery. You're never explicitly told what's happening through an omniscient narrator or dialogue spoken between our two protagonists (a young boy and girl), with your only clues being based off of the images being shown on screen. It and the bizarre and surreal lands you find yourself in are compelling draws to get you invested to explore the game further.

The game's overworld is also something to be applauded. It's simple, yet tells you everything you need to know. It evokes that same sense of mystery, yet also lays out just how short the game is. Each world (which contain sub-worlds of their own) is visible from the get go with locked worlds shrouded in fog. There are seven in total, and after two or three you realize that each one won't take you too long to get through.

The puzzles presented to the player are always challenging but never frustrating. They're all designed in such a confined space that eventually the puzzle will click in your head after manipulating time enough, understanding what doesn't work and what does. Another great aspect to the puzzle solving is that each world's design is intrinsically involved with the puzzle's design. To me, every time I'd complete a world I'd feel that same sense of achievement as if I solved a Rubik's Cube.

This loop The Gardens Between presents you with is rewarding yet doesn't overstay its welcome. Once I reached the story's end, I felt completely satisfied. I had no unanswered questions, and I didn't really need any more worlds to feel like the game provided enough for me. As someone who's also being going through issues in my reality, The Gardens Between presented a pleasant escape that not once wasted my time, and I'll always remember it for being a comfort aid.

As I said at the start of this article, there's something to be said about a game that doesn't waste the player's time. It treats the player with respect, never coddling or talking down to them. A game is meant to be a form of entertainment, and my personal belief is that a game's sole purpose is to leave the player with a unique experience. If a game becomes a chore, is it really imbuing the player with a meaningful journey? Games are done right when the final feeling from the game is anything but that sense of wastefulness. Now that's not to say all lengthy games are wasting the player's time, but there are certainly numerous examples of this in just 2018 alone. If the game didn't do its job right in the near countless hours spent in it, what was the whole point of utilizing the medium in the first place?

So here's to all the games that treat the player with respect. Whether they be a couple hours long like The Gardens Between or dozens of hours like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I appreciate you for providing us with unique and meaningful worlds, experiences, and long lasting impressions. You don't have to give me some complex, overarching narrative that spans numerous continents across decades of time. Just make it worth my time. I hope that more developers and publishers come to understand that simple idea because if we can learn anything from The Gardens Between it's this - time is precious, and we shouldn't waste it.